The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on FootDay, Holman
General
The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
Day, Holman
Political corruption -- Fiction; Water-supply -- Fiction
“Say it short,” growled Farr, clenching his fists as if he wanted to
beat indulgence for the child out of the hide of the world. “I'm paying
you for her life.”
“I have nothing to sell you in this case--therefore there can be no
pay.” He leaned over the bed and smoothed the moist, tangled hair away
from the child's brow. “I can only _give_ you something, my friend. I
give you all my sympathy. This baby is departing on a long journey, and
I'm Christian enough to believe that the way will be made very smooth
for the feet of little children. That's the faith of an old man.”
There were both earnestness and tenderness in his tones--the smugness of
the physician was gone. He shook Farr's hand and went out of the room,
treading softly.
And the next day Rosemarie's tiny fingers stopped their flutterings and
she went away--somewhere!
XI
THE LORDS OF THE CITY
Walker Farr would not allow the tiny body of Rosemarie to be carried
away in the white hearse. In his grief he had not been able as yet to
dissociate the identity of the child from the poor little tenement in
which her spirit had dwelt for the few barren years of her life; it
seemed to him that she would be very lonely in the white hearse. He rode
to the cemetery, holding the tiny casket across his knees. There was
only the one carriage--it was sufficient to carry the friends of little
Rosemarie: one Walker Farr and old Etienne and play-mamma Zelie Dionne.
The rack-tender sat opposite Farr and nursed a bundle on his knees. He
had wrapped it surreptitiously.
The two men sent Zelie Dionne back to the city in the carriage. But they
waited beside the grave until the sexton had finished his work; Farr
felt an uncontrollable impulse to wait till all was ended, as he had
always waited every night till the little girl was sound asleep and
tucked up in bed in the good woman's house. He sat crouched on the edge
of a turfed grave, elbows on his knees, his hands clutched into his
shock of hair.
After the sexton had departed, tools on his shoulder, Etienne unwrapped
the bundle. He began to arrange the child's toys on the grave.
“It is as the others do--the fathers and mothers of our faith in the
tenement-houses,” he explained, wistfully, to the young man. He pointed
to other graves in the vicinity, short and narrow graves. Toys were
spread on them, too. They were the poor treasures of dead children. The
toys had been left there in the vague, helpless yearning of parents who
strove to reach their human consolation beyond the grave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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